Shari’s Gone Country

As I said earlier, since the first of the month, this has been a wild ride indeed.

Last fall, when it was time to breed, we put a harness and color marker on Al (our big ram). The idea is that you can see the marks on the ewe’s rumps, so you know if they’ve been bred.

I very carefully looked for the marks (they’re quite obvious), and then entered the breeding dates into our fancy “Ranch Manager” software. That gave us pure dates for lambing… that’s what you call it when the ewe’s have their babies.

According to our software, “Annie” and “Carolyn” were due April 6, with “Merino” right behind them on April 7. Due April 12 would be “Beulah”, with “Amy” due last on April 18.

Well… so much for plans and software. Someone forgot to tell the ewe’s.

Sunday, March 30, “Annie” went into labor. Now, we’re real rookies at this sheep business. I have 16 years of commercial rabbit production, and hung out with “sheep folks”, but I’ve never actually been through the lambing season, except for a couple days of observations at the neighboring sheep ranch last year.

Being rookies, all we really knew was that we were supposed to stand by and stay out of the way. We had a pretty fair idea she was in labor, as we could see the contractions, and she was separated from the rest of the flock, and was really uncomfortable.

What we didn’t realize until much later… the next morning, was that she had ruptured internally. We got to her in time, so she’s still with us, but will be put up for auction as she’s no longer capable of breeding, and carrying lambs successfully.

Cindy and I spent the entire night with the truck parked at the sheep pen. We made hourly, even 15 minute rounds to check on her. At one point, we could see a little hoof and nose… but were helpless to help her in the dark of night.

Oh, and it was one of those very rare foggy nights on the desert. No moon, no lights visible anywhere. We couldn’t even see the horse corral just 50 yards away.

By sunrise, we had determined we needed help… so, we got on the phone to our various neighbor/mentors. We got Clyde and Amber’s answering machine. Linda was on her way to work. Our last hope was the shepherd at the sheep ranch.

While Cindy and I captured Annie and prepared to pull the first lamb, Bev raced to the sheep ranch to get Pedro. Luckily, he had a few minutes, a new-born quadruplet to graft to the ewe, and understood how much he was needed.

First words out of his mouth… “You girls are no sheep herders!”

“Of course, Pedro. We’re rookies… and once upon a time, you were a rookie, too. We’ve pulled the first lamb, but there are more and we don’t know how to get to the rest.”

It was a sad sight. Annie had three dead lambs in her. We successfully grafted the little bummer (a ewe lamb) we named “Stormy”. All in all, while we felt very badly, we were also elated with the fact that we’d been able to save the ewe and the bummer.

On April 3, Bev was “on watch” and came in to announce that “Beulah” was in labor. Sure enough, she presented first a small black bundle. Cindy and I watched as she cleaned and nosed the little rascal, trying to get it to stand.

“Come on! Get up… I’ve got more coming and you have to be independent.”

Unfortunately, Beulah had to turn her attention the next little guy, leaving Cindy and me to pitch in and help. We had some colostrum ready. The little guy was brought into the house and given a nice soft warm bed as well as a good meal.

In the mean time, Beulah gave birth to three more little lambs. The second little guy was on his feet in just minutes, finding his way to “Mom’s teat”. The next little girl was quickly on her feet, too.

The last little bundle came out kicking. I was “on watch” at that time and marveled at how active the little guy was… but he was having a tough time standing up. Beulah hadn’t bothered to bite off the umbilical, and it was twisted around his back legs… No wonder he couldn’t stand up.

Cindy to the rescue!

Within a few hours, the little guy we rescued had died… another sad moment. But, he had weighed less than 5 pounds and his siblings were all over 8 pounds, so it wasn’t totally unexpected.

The April 6 and April 7 due dates passed with no activity.

Finally, Tuesday April 8, “Amy” dropped a pair of twins. These little gals tipped the scales at 10 and 12 pounds each. What beautiful little ewe lambs. We named the chocolate one “Mouton” in honor of one of my business partners. Her maiden name was “Mouton”, which means sheep in French, and her birthday was April 6. The other little gal is named “Dixie” in honor of our original mentor. These were all her sheep last year.

Thursday morning, I was greeted with two more little lambs, compliments of “Merino”. She had two little boys, who look like identical twins. These little guys were kind of small, and not on their feet for hours, so once again… it’s Cindy to the rescue with some nice warm colostrum.

We’ve gotten real good at milking sheep this week, as we’ve felt the need to make sure each ewe has had milk for the lambs. So far, no bottle babies, and that’s a very good sign.

The score? As of this entry, we have four little ewe lambs, “Stormy”, “Princess”, “Dixie” and “Mouton”. We have four little ram lambs, which we’ve already committed to sell to a neighboring Mexican family at weaning time. We’ll make a little, they’ll take them and feed them out, using some for food and sharing others with friends.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 12th, 2008 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Sheep. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.